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Intel's Core 2 Desktop Processors Tested
Steve Kerrison writes "It's early morning here in the UK, but that doesn't stop us from being around to see the launch of Conroe and friends, Intel's newest desktop chips. Even a $180 Intel CPU can beat an Athlon FX-62 in a number of tests. Now that's bound to get the fanboy blood pumping, right? We've also taken a look at a pre-built system that's powered by the Extreme X6800 CPU, along with an nForce 4 SLI chipset. As you'd expect, it's quick."
Gotta wonder if intel can legitimately deliver at this price or if they are going with loss leader tactics to try and regain marketshare.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
so when will the first PC's come out with these?
There's a much more detailed review up at HotHardware.com
will this be enough to run Vista?
"Real World" testing of the new core2 duo's over at HardOCP seems to suggest that the hype is, well, Bullshot (Penny Arcade). He also savages... no, investigates, the other benchmarks with his normal subtle-but-robust manner :)
It seems that the top of the line Core2Duo just barely beats an FX-62 numerically in actual game performance; statistically there is no difference whatsoever...
As with all things, it comes down to perspective. I have no doubt that Intel are catching up to AMD, may indeed have caught up. However, I simply do not believe they have gone from lagging significantly to leading significantly at the same clock speed; Time, I suppose, will tell.
We have a comprehensive review on OCAU also: http://www.overclockers.com.au/article.php?id=4895 87
We compare the new high-end 2.93GHz X6800 and the 2.67GHz E6700, with the current Pentium D 955XE and AMD's A64 FX-62. Lots of info, loads of benchmarks and of course, some overclocking.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1989036 ,00.asp
http://www.overclockers.com.au/article.php?id=4895 87
this might very well be an interesting article but if they're going to submit me to atleast five flash ads on screen at the same time, this early in the morning, I think I'll pass.
Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology.
..but it seems I need to upgrade to this new Intel processor so that my computer can handle all the ads in the website.
Even if it's just a shot at getting market share back, the fact that great things like this are being sold at lower prices only mean good things for the consumer. This, for example, is GREAT for me as a system builder because everything besides the Pentium D 805 was expensive. Now, with something like this, I can offer a (possibly) better CPU for not that much more.
More good stuff is coming from both camps, I predict.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
I think the competition has been good, but if Intel returns wearing the performance crown then I think there is a real potential that the CPU market will be dominated by Intel more so than it has ever been before, with consoles being the main holdout. If these benchmarks are true, then the introduction of the Core Duo will be a real turning point I think. Keep in mind that these speeds are introductory and that in the past Intel hasn't had much trouble progressing to higher performance out of the same architecture.
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
What the benchmarks mean is that if you do a lot of media encoding, compiling, etc, you would probably benefit from conroe. HOWEVER, if you play games, regardless of whether or not you are on an AMD/INTEL system currently--if your system is pretty new--Do not upgrade at this time, as you are GPU limited, not CPU limited. Basically conroe: Large performance gains in cpu bound applications Little performance gain in gpu bound applications, obviously. This is good for intel. My systems for the past 7 years or so have been AMD. My next one very well may not be. The good news for everyone is that AMD is now the underdog again. Remember what happened last time they were the underdog? We got the athlon. The cpu speed wars went into a frenzy. For the last several years (5 or so) Intel has been sucking balls. Their chips have not been performance competitive. Clock speeds in both camps have stagnated. AMD chip prices have went way up compared to how they used to be. This is good news, AMD will go into overdrive developing their next-gen chips. Amd chips will become dirt cheap again. We'll see a new performance war. This is something i've been waiting for anxiously for a few years. I am very excited. Another thing is that the new intel chips take much less power than the old ones . (thank god)
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
(cribbed from my post in anothe rplace).HardOCP are complete AMD whores here.
They do the power tests with power saving settings turned off. This gives AMD the edge at idle, mostly due to a lower transistor count. As other sites have shown, turning the power saving settings on (as one would expect) puts Intel far out front at idle.
How do they end that article?
" I would highly suggest keeping your eyes on AMD low wattage / energy efficient processors for those projects that require a noiseless solution."
So they make Intel look worse than they are, and yet Intel still wins at under load. What's the takeaway? Buy AMD.
In the gaming, after the Intel gets done smoking the FX-62, what do they say?
"It is very interesting that in all of our testing, both "what is playable" testing and "apples-to-apples" testing, the Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 and Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 are very close in performance. In fact, in some games they are dead even. The price difference between the two is very extreme with the Core 2 Extreme X6800 costing $999 and the Core 2 Duo E6700 at $530. Does it look like the price is justified between the two for gaming? We can safely say "no" as far as gaming goes with this gameplay testing we have performed."
Then, when speaking of AMD, do they mention even the E6700 ($530) beat the FX-62 and the FX-62 costs over $800? Nope.
"As for the AMD Athlon 64 FX-62, all of our testing shows that it does trail the two new Intel CPUs in gameplay performance. So, if you wanted to point one out as being a "winner" then for sure it is the new Intel Core 2 X6800 and E6700. But, if you look at the amount of difference between the AMD and Intel CPUs, you will see that it isn't enough to amount to anything. The only game that we saw any real-world difference in was Oblivion, and even that was tiny. A little overclocking would clear that difference up."
Any mention of overclocking levels and how the Core 2 Duo overclocks well? Much better than an FX-62 usually. Nope.
What's their takeaway from the gaming section where a $530 Intel beats out AMD's fastest chip (at $800)?
"We have proven here that the flurry of canned benchmarks based on timedemos showing huge gains with Core 2 processors are virtually worthless in rating the true gaming performance of these processors today. The fact of the matter is that real-world gaming performance today greatly lies at the feet of your video card. Almost none of today's games are performance limited by your CPU. Maybe that will change, but given the trends, it is not likely."
and then
"Lastly, I would advise everyone that is thinking of rushing out and purchasing their latest upgrade that we are sure to see HUGE pricing slashes out of AMD before the end of the month."
Way to go HardOCP. Rig your tests, ignore Intel victories and make your summary "buy AMD".
You have zero cerdibility, HardOCP.
Also, you used bullshot wrong. Bullshot is a term for fake screenshots designed for games (like EA uses). It doesn't fit here.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I not quite comfortable with the way in which Intel/AMD set out their roadmaps to gradually increase the number of cores. It seems a bit fast for me, something done more for generating sales than any substanial performance improvement. By the time any substantial portion of software products are developed from the ground-up to be optimized for dual cores, the number of cores would likely have moved on. It won't be fun to have to upgrade your processor every two years just to get those extra cores that will be woefully underused by what would most likely be a market full of un-optimized software. Load balancing would really only be the way software makers would bother to optimize their code for anythimg more than 4 cores. My understanding is that load-balancing threads or whatever on cpus is not an exact science, and can quickly kill performance when not done right. Can it be justified to 'upgrade' to a newer more-cores processor every two years if you don't see a corresponding increase in UT2009/2012 framerates, or better perfmance in MS Excel...?
Quote from the article: "Intel, then, has moved the goalposts as far as consumer-level CPUs are concerned. Its low-end Core 2 Duo parts are more than a match for anything that has come before." Thus, Intel raises the capabilities on the low end systems. This is great. But besides gaming, are there anything needing such performance boost?
I thought it said Extreme 68000. So much for being able to run MacOS on an Intel based machine.
you mispelt fanboi
Everything else aside, that was the one thing that interested me the most about the review - the fact that the new conroes are allegedly going to be consuming about half as much power as current desktop chips. Why is this important? Well, if such gains can be made on the desktop, I'm _really_ looking forward to the laptop chips. Maybe the 7hrs claimed battery life by laptop manufacturers will actually be accurate in the near future.
Even though the benchmarks show that the intel conroe beats the amd fx, the real question still remains, the value. Would you honestly notice a difference in fps when both processors were running relatively close in frames per second. Maybe the conroe can get 20 more fps per second, but is that worth the extra money. Amd is notorious for being less expensive then Intel. Either way you could run the top of the line games, its just a question of which allows you to get more bang for your buck. If Amd sets a signifigantly competitive price, then it really doesn't matter how well the processors perform, people will choose whichever one provides the most performance per dollar value. While the Conroe beats the Fx in the performance battle, it still has not yet won the war. Let the price battle begin.
Klingon Software is not released, it escapes, inflicting terrible damage onto the enemy as it does
Most likley they are just having good yeilds. They've pretty much got the kinks worked out of their 65nm process with the Pentium Ds they made on it so it wouldn't supprise me that Core 2s are having high yeilds. High yeilds = low cost per unit. This is espically true if the yeilds are high, but mostly at lower speeds. Say 90% of chips work, but of that 90% 50% only work at the slowest speed. Well, just knock the price down on that and get it back in volume, hike it up more on the rarer fast chips.
If you look at their current pricing, it's not real supprising. You find you can get a Pentium D 65nm for as little as $175. That gets you a 3GHz one on their old 90nm technology. The price creaps up on the first incriment, a 3.2 is $217. However it takes a sizable jump then to $317 for 3.4GHz. The 3.6GHZ, if you can find it, is $500 or so. Past that, well there's only the "extreme" edition and that's over $1000 for 3.73GHz.
The jumps like that are normal. They can easily produce low speed chips and there's a large market for them so they are cheap. Maybe a couple incremental upgrades. Then you hit a knee and prices start jumping fast.
Based on their current pricing for their current high end, I don't see anything out of the oridinary for this new pricing.
The FX-62 was released to be in mild competition with intels next offerings, that to me was obvios, it was not intended to be the final product you have to chose between. Intel however IMO have released the conroe to be in a pissing contest with AMD, but AMD will just piss further then Intel can reach with the conroe, putting them behind again, and putting hte stupid people who rush out to change to an intel system just because the conroe is statistically better.
The processor is generally the thing I upgrade the least because it simply has the least increase in demands. Video cards you can upgrade once a year and not be doing it too often given the advances they have. Throwing lots of RAM at your system is also a good idea. Processor? Well for gaming and most apps it just really isn't that big a deal. Get a good dual core of prett much any design you like and call it good. Hell if all you are worried about id gaming and not doing things in the background while you game get a good single core, games still don't make any use of a second core to speak of.
I moved from a P4 2.4GHz to a Pentium D 2.8GHz when I did a system overhaul not too long ago. Why such a minor processor upgrade, you might wonder? Well because the processor wasn't the issue. That 2.4 was plenty fast, for games at least. The graphics card was the issue and I wanted PCIe which my board didn't support. Had the board had the same socket, I would have just kept the processor. It was fine (though because of teh audio work I do I'm appreciating the dual core). I just got a dual core because they weren't that much more expensive and it has geek appeal to me.
The real useful thing, in my book, is that the Core 2s run cooler. Current processors have tended towards too hot. AMD is much better than Intel but even they put out quite a bit of heat at the high end. It sounds like the Core 2s are quite efficient for the performance they give. That's good because I value a quiet system and frankly, it's as good as I'm willing to make it at this point cooling wise. I'm not going water cooling and there's just no more air cooling I can do short of making the fans speed up.
I don't think I'd recommend these as an upgrade to anyone who already has a dual core AMD or Intel system. Unless you are doing simulations or rendering or something I just can't see the minor increase as worth it. Certianly not for games. However if you need to upgrade anyhow, these look like winners.
The headline states that "Even a $180 Intel CPU can beat an Athlon FX-62 in a number of tests" but if you read the article, the $182 Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.83 GHz) chip wasn't tested. All of the performance data relates to the $224 Core 2 Duo E6400 and pricier chips. The results are impressive, but I think the "$180 chip beats Athlon FX-62" deception should be pointed out to anyone who didn't pick that detail up from RTFA.
Rick Brewster of Paint.NET fame tested two Core 2 CPUs with his own benchmark.
I wonder if we will ever see a Core Pentio?
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
There are Athlon-FX 64-bit processors that still beat this benchmark by 2-3 thousand points on CPU-Z. I'm no Intel nor AMD Fanboy (I'm a Cyrix fan from beginning to end, and if you can't understand why then compare Unreal Tournament under a P2+MMX 233 against my Cyrix MII-233MX processor with the same RAM (Type+Amount,) and video+sound card. (Hint: The Cyrix beat the ever-loving shit out of the PII by a blazing 25 FPS (I don't use large abstract numbers, I use real-life performance tests/observable results, like the rest of you overclock geeks should use.) So my question is (Compared with my personal RL observations against Intel and AMD's claims,) is who the hell is bothering to rate their processors by what REALLY counts? By this I mean MIPS (Millions of Instructions Per Second [performed]) as opposed to GHz? Actually, I'd like to see MIPC as in Millions of Instructions per Cycle the processor is capable of. I don't care how many times it can do the same thing over again - how many times can it do the same thing, using a more efficient algorithm (like the divide by 10 thing, instead of dividing by 10 we multiply by .1) over and over again, and how can people finally realize the more true and better optimizations for their processors so we can have a far more accurate measure of performance? Benchmarks, AFAIC, (As Far As I'm Concerned,) are just an e-penis waggling contest. Gimme something I consider to be real results if you want to market your processor to someone that has even a modicum of a clue (And I admittedly have a very low clue about processors, but I'm still not a n00b when it comes to them. I've played with processors since I owned an Intel 8088 Packard Bell that I ran Jill of the Jungle and a few BBS servers on, funnily enough I was only 7-8 at that time and had full command of DOS and most of the standard BBS door-game system. Yep, that's sad, and my father was around computers FAR more than I ever was at that age.)
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
What I really want to know is which architecture is best suited as a server, I've seen no detailed tests for such things.
Personally I got a massive hard on for Sun Fire X4200 when it comes to 64bit PC "server" (UltraSPARC T1 is really where it's at for real servers) architecture; running lighttp, Zope v3 and PostgreSQL.
Does anyone have some links based on server perfomance (mostly IO).
Its interesting that all benchmarks seem to include mp3 compression or mpeg video creation etc. How many slashdot users actually use their computers more than 1-5% of the time doing that type of stuff? Of course Its all those DiVX groups that need the performance so that they can encode and release an extra 20% more videos in a month ;)
Overall the performance of the latest bunch of Intel processors is great, but when it comes down to it in a datacentre environment where spare stock etc is a costly exercise using Intel products is going to cost you more in the long run, while if we go with Opteron we can save on spares and still get great performance/power consumption.
TDP of Core 2 Duo E6400: 65W
TDP of Athlon FX-64: 125W
Whoops!
Probably a year or two before Vista ships.
List kep up to date of Core 2 Reviews so far including 16 articles, with more to follow.
But you'll have to wait a while to get that, Q1 07 is it? (K8L)
And from the looks of the overclocking potential in these new cores, Intel has a lot of head room..
There's a pretty good review up at bit-tech too - 10 processors compared
I've followed all the links discussed here and I can't find any 64-bit benchmarks. Does the Intel Core 2 also deliver superb results with 64-bit code running on a 64-bit operating system?
Vista? Nah, will this be enough to run Duke Nukem Forever?
Personally, I don't care about processors costing USD 400 or gaming performance, where CPU doesn't matter too much anyway. Are there any comparisons of the cheapest Core 2 processors with similarly priced AMDs?
But how does the Core 2 Duo compare to an overclocked 3.7GHz* Pentium D 805?
*3.7GHz is the fastest it can go on a normalish cooling system, I believe
I make websites and stuff. Buy one.
Has anyone noticed the processor is not yet available for sale and won't be available for a while? - I was very impressed by the benchmarks until I tried to find it for sale and saw that expected street prices will be far higher than those listed in the review sites and in fact will rival AMD prices.
See, this is how capitalism is supposed to work. AMD starts to gain market share, Intel is forced to bust out better technology. I can promise you this - if not for AMD nipping at Intel's heels this technology would be less powerful, more expensive, and much longer delayed. For all of those AMD fanboys: don't switch. If AMD goes out of business Intel will have no reason to innovate (or lower prices).
Haiku for you!
First off, why in the world would you turn on power saving modes when benchmarking for performance?
What are you talking about?
Did you read the HardOCP article?
Apparently Not.
If you turn off speed step and do a POWER CONSUMPTION test you will get higher consumption at idle is you do not turn it off with NO, wait, let me repeat that, NO performace degradation.
the Core 2 Duo with the Pentium D 840, Pentium D940 family? If would be usefull to see how much better they actually are compared to the previous generation. Anybody found such a review?
There got to be a spelling Nazi labor camp for people who spell like you :-)
Life ain't fair :-)
So the big question is, which manufacturers are going to get these into the shops first? I'm hanging for a new machine and I do a lot of compiling so maybe itll be worth a small wait... any ideas?
according to this chartc elistshort5xu.png
http://img236.imageshack.us/img236/5492/amd724pri
and they overclock easily from 2.0ghz core to 2.5ghz making it 4600+
I was only waiting for these for the supposed AMD price cuts. The only reason my A64 3000+ system is getting the boot is because it is socket 754, so I need to be rid of the dead socket and get me some DDR2, SATA-II, and PCI-X lovin'. The PCI-X is the main reason since my 9600AIW is showing age, though it did get me the best free game with a vid card ever, HL2. Real performance increase for me will come from the GPU (though the CPU won't hurt).
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
I'll buy whatever gives me the biggest bank for the buck - be it AMD or Intel. I currently own two AMD systems, but if Intel is faster and cheaper I'll go with them.
"As you'd expect, it's quick."
Quick or not...Intel is just the Microsoft of the processor world.
I have come to expect just the oposite from Intel...I have not purchased a single processor from them since 1997, due to my perception of them being evil and making shitty products... I just can't handle a company who ditches 9000 employees right after they announce a new product, it makes me want to hurl.
----- I have bad karma for a reason! -----
Every test I saw was running the Athlon CPU in 32 bit mode. Kind of puts the Athlon at a disadvantage right now. Yes I know that the unless you are running a server or using Linux you are going to be very limited in software selection running in 64bit mode.
Kind of reminds me of when the 386SX first came out. A lot of people where telling people that a 20 MHZ 286 was a much better selection. And they had lots of 16 bit DOS benchmarks to prove it.
I would love to see some bench marks under Linux or Windows using 64 bit code.
How about some database benchmarks, rendering, trans-coding, and compiling tests.
Seems like the Core-Duo is as good or better at running 32-bit code as the Athlon-64.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Would AMD regain their lead simply by releasing their next processor with 4MB L2 cache?c leid=845&cid=1) you will see that the performance closely corrosponds to cache size.
If you look carefully at some of the Conroe benchmarks at hothardware (http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?arti
For example in PC WorldBench 5's Windows Media Encoder and Mozilla MT, you the conroe E6700 (4MB cache) scores 280, the Athlon 64 FX-62 (2MB cache) scores 314, the Athlon 64 X2 5000+ (1MB cache) scores 410.
You see similar results with the WorldBench 5.0 benchmarks.
the round pegs in the square holes
Is that what the game is called these days? We just called it backpussy.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
One thing they did not do, was enable raid on all test systems. When raid is enabled, Intel dual core chips drop way behind in many tests.
Seriously, why can't the editors do us the courtesy of putting [hexus.net] after the stupid links? Hexus.net hurts my head.
Even a $180 Intel CPU can beat an Athlon FX-62 in a number of tests
But, wait! YOU didn't wait for the next Athlon FX-63 processor that totally smashes that $180 Intel one!
It's coming out in a few minutes...
But wait again! A NEW $175 Intel next generation processor is on the verge of completion, and will be released soon after the Athlon FX-63 to totally obliterate that one!
It's coming out at the close of business today.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This "review" is nothing but a left-handed rearranging of Intel's accompanying PR material -- and apparently the author hasn't even undesrstood half of it. (The same material is available at the Hot Hardware review, where it is clearly marked as "Provided by Intel" like it should.)
GDHardware looks like a joke -- do they have good stuff too? (Can't be bothered to check now.)
Merom and Yonah are basically dual-core Pentium M chips - 3 instruction decoders, 3-wide instruction issue / retire. They include the Pentium M's instructional units, including 2 64-bit SSE units per core.
Conroe and Woodcrest are complete redesigns of the Pentium M architecture, and are 4 + 1 decode, 4-wide issue and retire. Intel completely revamped the execution units: they include additional execution ports, and more floating-point power (ncluding full 128-bit wide SSE processing paths).
While they are both of the same pedigree (P6 -> Pentium M), they are NOT AT ALL the same. One is designed for efficiency, and the other tosses some efficiency out the window in favor of increased performance. See the preview article here at Real World Technologies.
You are thinking of the AMD Athlon / Opteron / Turion, which are the exact same chip with different microcode paths enabled. These chips can most certainly be taken from the same wafer.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
the article sold me on waiting for an E6600 for my next upgrade. And, I was definitely in the AMD camp before this - AMD owned pretty much every CPU crown I care about. The E6600 meets or exceeds every spec I care about over the top of the line AMD CPU, and [H]'s article sealed it.
;) So now I'm a very happy camper, and will eagerly be awaiting the E6600 to arrive in stores. Considering the OC potential of that chip, I'm sure I'll have to stand in line (figuratively) with everyone else that wants one.
What this means is that after 4 AMD CPUs and a single Intel CPU in the last 4 years, I'll be upgrading my workhorse system to an Intel chip.
Now, to be fair, if I owned any of the X2 or top end FX chips today, I wouldn't upgrade yet. That was something else the article made clear. I was waiting on the price drop of the X2s rumored for a couple of months as I wanted multiple CPUs/cores for video processing - I'm cheap, sue me
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Merom is from the same microarchitecture as Conroe and Woodcrest.
You are correct about Yonah though.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
You'd clearly be better off investing in a keyboard with a working ENTER key than buying a new CPU. You might want to break the parenthesis keys on your current one in the mean time.
Remember what happened last time [AMD] were the underdog? We got the athlon.
Remember what happened last time Intel were the underdog? We got the Conroe.
Imagine what might happen if Microsoft became an underdog.
I'm a little suprised that no-one else here has picked up on the fact that the high end chips (which are the ones reviewed mostly), have 4MB of level 2 cache.
The entire Doom game engine can fit in that and have room left over.
Now, I wonder how well the lesser chips (Duo E6400 and lower) fair?
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Check out the Hard OCP benches... I trust them more than what's it's hexus
E wOCwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdAE xMCwsLGhlbnRodXNpYXN0
Gaming: http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MT
Music/Video encoding: http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MT
According to this page the scientific benchmark offers a mixed result. Although ScienceMark seems to be well-designed it's Windows-only and closed source. I'd be interested to see some open, Linux-oriented benchmarks. I wrote a very simple one called obench.m which uses Octave running off a live Quantian 0.7.9.1 CD, it might be interesting to get some numbers from it (I have timed some Pentiums, Athlons and Opterons).
are you serious? AMD is always playing catchup. with big names like Dell, Apple, and more under Intel's belt, i don't think they NEED to regain market share.
My MythTV box spends MOST Of its time doing exactly that. If these chips are as fast/cheap/cool (and therefore QUIET) as they appear to be, my MythTV box will be running Conroe by the end of the year.
- Core 2 Duo is faster than AMD for raw CPU. (Yes, this from a die-hard AMD fan)
- Power-consumption, the brands are (finally) about at parity.
- AMD's single processor-based advantage is memory: main memory access is still faster via on-chip memory controller. Admittedly, not worth much. BUT...
Criticisms.- I STILL have yet to see apples-to-apples comparisons. I'm pleased that these benchmarks are finally pitting DDR2 memory against DDR2 memory, but then they go and run a single-core AMD chip against a dual-core Intel chip. AMD single-core is a tiny bit faster per core than an AMD dual core, but single vs. dual makes a difference. Lousy benchmark design, folks.
- All the AMD benchmarks I saw were on nforce4 MBs
... AMD chips are up to nforce5 now (I've had one for the past two months). Yet the Intel MBs are using nforce5-generation chipsets. Again, lousy benchmarking!
- No analysis of the source of differences. Architecturally, Intel has 4-way issue vs. AMD's 3-way issue and Intel has 4MB L2 vs. AMD's 1MB L2. Now, AMD moves to a 65nm process later this year and their caches are going to come up to size (Intel has always had larger caches); I expect AMD's next core to bump issue width up to 4-way later this year or early next year. So we really don't know if Intel's architecture is any better or not - we really have to wait until AMD matches these easier-to-adjust features, which I expect to take ~6 months.
I'm still a fan of AMD, and I'm still going to buy AMD. Why? These benchmarks didn't show it, but scale up the number of processors to 2 sockets (for a total of 4 cores) and AMD is going to kick Intel all over the map. In short, AMD's system architecture is still more advanced than Intel's, and that means more *to me* than the processor's actual speed.A witty [sig] proves nothing. --Voltaire
Yeah but the Intel one is "typical" which means it will exceed 65W,
whereas the AMD one is the max thermal, and will not exceed, and
they use the same number on several processors. I wish they'd use
the same metric.
Too bad the greatest thing about the x6800 is that it ships with the multipliers unlocked. meaning you can throttle it down to test against other cpus or you can throttle it up for OCing. I think Anandtech had a good review and talked about this "unlocking" on every page. If it wasnt him, it was toms hardware. Also, for the people whining about hardOCP. That is just the gaming test. Read the other 4 tests.
The basic fact is that "hardware enthusiasts" are neither good writers nor are they all that technically knowledgeable. Their saving grace is that they are willing to spend days on the drudgery of benchmarking. We are willing to forgive their artistic pretensions in exchange for a valuable service. You just have to read the reviews with your BS filter on.
It is true that this is not the first time that Intel has focused on IPC, that integrated memory controllers are not evil, and that few people fully understand the detailed workings of SSE (definitely not me). These are all instances of marketing BS. But they don't really mean anything. The benchmarks show that the Core architecture has much better IPC than the P4, regardless of whether this is due to the extra pipeline, shorter pipelines, better cache, lower memory latency, etc. And the benchmarks also show that the Core has better memory latency than P4 despite the external memory controller. And lastly Intel has drastically improved the floating point performance of the Core processor over its predecessor, the Pentium M, thanks to improvements in the SSE unit, whatever those improvements may be.
This is always going to happen when a journalistic organ is supported by sponsors from the industry it covers. The editors are obligated to include a bunch of marketing BS. You can get valuable information from these compromised sources, but you have to read between the lines.
Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! ~Paul Usul Muad'Dib Atreides
*Queues up the Dune Music*
In many of the tests, you see the Intel Pentium EE itself doing as well as or better than the Athlon 64 AM2.
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Give me Vim, Bash, Linux, and access to the Internet; and I'll move the world.
Off topic... just wanted to comment on your sig. Pi in Roman Numerals... I like it.
Wow. That's extremely offensive. Guess I'd expect that coming from an AC on /.; atleast I have the balls to post with my actual handle.
However, in my own defense, I've not shopped at Hot Topic in several years. I suppose you'd be one of the ones waiting outside such a place, berating the patrons. 'Omg, selloutz, indie rulezzz!'
My love for OS X can be summed up in a quote I saw somewhere. Somewhere else. A long time ago. 'Mac OS X: Because making BSD pretty was easier than fixing Windows.'
Informatus Technologicus
Sometimes I wish you could mod comments as "-1 Incorrect" :)
Merom has exactly the same core as Conroe / Woodcrest. In fact, the design team for the Core 2 Duo used the codename "Merom" - not Conroe, not Woodcrest. The only thing that differentiates a Merom from a Conroe is clockspeed and socket (package).
Dan
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=6184
I hadn't been to the site, hadn't heard of it before, but I'm already irritated. First page- Eight ads, seven of which are the motion heavy "Oh god please look at me!" ads. In addition, they've got the moneyword type ads. The days of simply being able to read a review are apparently over. We have to be inundated with copious amounts of "buy me or suffer a seizure." I didn't get past the first two sentences before closing the page in disgust.
Which is largely responsible for a lot of inaccuracies in battery life. Specifically, the Windows implementation of usb polling can prevent machines from entering their lowest sleep states when idle. I havn't been following this issue in the last month or two, however, so I don't know if the problem has been rectified. I do know that early test reports on Conroe indicated that, due to its design, it was even more succeptable to this problem on Windows machines than prior processors. The issue doesn't show up in other operating systems, however, its a pure Windows issue.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
In the power tests, they didn't turn on power savings. That makes no sense.
Maybe you think they shouldn't turn those modes on when testing for performance either. I don't happen to agree. I run my Athlon 64 4200+ with power modes (cool n quiet) on all the time. It doesn't hurt performance.
Kyle does not close the article by saying to get a Core 2 to future proof. I selected the last sentence from the article:
"Lastly, I would advise everyone that is thinking of rushing out and purchasing their latest upgrade that we are sure to see HUGE pricing slashes out of AMD before the end of the month."
I don't know why HardOCP is all about prices all of a sudden, when the low end Pentium D was cheaper than Athlon 64 X2 3800+, rarely did HardOCP say "buy the Intel, it's cheaper".
Why repeat the FX-62 price? Good question. I would ask, why repeat the Intel price then?
AMD has not led P4 on performance for the lifetime of the P4. They have led almost all the way, but when Intel debuted the P4/400 w/dual-channel DDR at 200MHz ("800"FSB, 875P chipset)), they smoked Athlon XP. Athlon XP had a single 133MHz channel of SDR for a total memory bandwidth of 1.06GB/s. The P4/400 had 6.4GB/s memory bandwidth, and it really showed. Suddenly AMD was behind on peformance. They were behind on price/performance, but when the 865P chipset came out, the price differential in motherboards was huge. AMD mobos were expensive at the time (if you recall) and the total price difference wasn't bad for a while.
But then nForce came out and AMD kicked it up another notch, while Intel lengthened their pipeline from 14 stages to 22 stages. And Intel fell behind until Core Duo came out. Core Duo beat Athlon 64 X2 clock for clock and walloped it on power. Core 2 Duo merely extends the lead and takes the pure performance lead (Core Duo didn't clock high enough to match up).
The thesis he takes "don't bother buying expensive CPUs, CPU speed doesn't matter" cuts both ways. If true, why not recommend the Core 2 Duo E6400 or E6500? Each provides about the same real-world performance as the Athlon FX-62 at 1/4 the price. But HardOCP didn't take that tack. They said "watch for cheaper AMDs soon" instead.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
The top 13 systems in this year's Top 500 supercomputers might be ab;le to pull it off.
Then again, maybe not.
Let's say I had the ability to pester MIS to get me a Core 2 Duo machine. Should I?
What would my argument be? It runs Half-life n% faster than an FX62? Whoop-dee-do!
I would really like to see performance comparisons geared towards software developers.
The type of benchmark that I would consider relevant is one that would measure the time it would take to build a large C++ application in, say, Visual Studio (on Windows) or GCC (on Linux et al) versus a comparably priced Pentium D machine.
Even better, run a couple of VMs on the machine, each one doing a task similar to the above (in parallel) and tell me how much "dead" time the Core 2 will save me in that scenario.
Why did I say P4/400 when I meant P4/3.0 GHz (w/HT)?
And when shortly thereafter I say "They were behind on price/performance", I meant "Intel was behind on price/performance".
Anyway, I think you get the gist.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
i would like to say congratulations to the engineers who designed it. (it's been a dream of mine to create a next gen microprocessor.)
i'd like to elaborate on designs:
1. low memory latency - given that they are not using integrated memory controllers, the core 2 latency is lower than amd. the transition to fb-dimms also provide higher latency that is still overcomed by the architecture.)
2. low bandwidth utilization - increasing bus bandwidth does not increase the performance of the processor significantly (as in netburst.) there is no bandwidth cotention given that it is dual core (compared to previous bus limited dual xeons.) i just wish that someone would be able to provide benchmarks for an underclocked bus to be able to see the actual utilization of the architecture.
3. highly efficient cpu - the execution of commands is well thought of. the concept of the macro/micro fusion amazes me. branch prediction is highly accurate. and the prefetch does a good job of avoiding idling the cpu (resulting in 1 and 2.)
for those working on the manufacturing process, congratulations too. here are my reasons:
1. low power consumption - best performance/watt ratio
2. highly overclockable cpus - anandtech reports that it is possible to run it at 4ghz in room temperature using air cooling
i just hope that everybody improves (mainly amd and intel) so that all of us consumers will get better products at much cheaper prices!
Live your life each day as if it was your last.